US diplomat: Giuliani in lies campaign

Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan

Published: 08/11/2019Updated: 8 November 2019 7:21 am

Former US national security adviser John Bolton is refusing to testify in the Trump investigation. Credit: AP

A top US diplomat told congressional investigators that President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani conducted a "campaign full of lies" against the US ambassador to Ukraine before she was recalled from her post.

According to a transcript of testimony released on Thursday, George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state, told the Trump impeachment inquiry that he was also subject to attacks by Giuliani but was told to "keep my head down" by a senior State Department official.

The Democratic-led inquiry in the House of Representatives is focused on a July 25 phone call in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Joe Biden, a former vice president and now a leading Democratic rival in the November 2020 presidential election.

Giuliani, is central to the inquiry and he has been mentioned frequently in testimony by State Department diplomats.

They have painted a picture of the former New York City mayor running a shadow US policy toward Ukraine to pressure it to carry out a corruption investigation into Biden and his son, who worked for a Ukrainian gas company.

Kent mentioned Giuliani 73 times in his testimony to lawmakers which was given behind closed doors session on October 15, but only released on Thursday.

Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine, was abruptly pulled from her post in May and Kent said Giuliani conducted a smear campaign against her.

"His assertions and allegations against former Ambassador Yovanovitch were without basis, untrue, period," Kent testified.

"(Mr) Giuliani, at that point, had been carrying on a campaign for several months full of lies and incorrect information Ambassador Yovanovitch, so this was a continuation of his campaign of lies," Kent said.

Neither Giuliani nor a lawyer for him immediately responded to requests for comment on Kent's testimony.

Kent said Ukrainian officials understood when they met with Giuliani that he was not a regular private citizen and understood he represented Trump.

"Giuliani was not consulting with the State Department about what he was doing in the first half of 2019. And to the best of my knowledge, he's never suggested that he was promoting US policy," Kent said.

For nearly a year, Giuliani has pursued unsubstantiated allegations that Biden pushed to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor to stop him from investigating Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company, where Biden's son Hunter served on the board.

Giuliani also told Reuters he played a role in the effort to remove Yovanovitch.

Democrats have been releasing transcripts of the closed-door interviews as they prepare for public hearings in Congress next week. Kent is among the three US diplomats who will serve as star witnesses.

Lawmakers are trying to determine whether Trump froze $US391 million in US security assistance for Ukraine to put pressure on Zelenskiy to conduct the investigation, thus misusing US foreign policy for his personal gain.

Trump's defenders say there is no evidence of him and the Ukrainian president engaging in a "quid pro quo" - exchanging a favour for a favour - because the aid to Ukraine was released and Zelenskiy never explicitly promised anything.

The impeachment inquiry met on Thursday for the first time with an adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, but former national security adviser John Bolton failed to heed a request to appear.

A lawyer for Bolton, a foreign policy hawk who was fired by Trump in September, said he would not testify voluntarily.

A House Intelligence Committee official said Bolton has threatened to take the committee to court if it subpoenas him.